Kraken in a Coffee Cup: 13-15

Chapters 13-15

Table of Contents

If you’re new to the story, I suggest beginning with the table of contents so you’ll understand the origins of the text and why I say it was co-authored by Herman Melville.

And now,

Kraken in a Coffee Cup.

Chapter Thirteen

When the steward thrusts his pale, loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle and announces dinner, Captain Charon catches hold of the mizen shrouds, swings himself to the deck, and in an even voice says, “Dinner, Mr. Eleazar,” before disappearing into the cabin. I look to the helmsman, and he, to me. If this is an awkward moment, only I seem to register it so. Until this very hour, the captain always announced the meal to the helmsman, whose name is Graveling, and then Graveling announced the meal to me. It set the official ranking, with Graveling as acting first mate and me coming up behind. Today, the captain has marked the change.

“Dinner, Mr. Graveling,” I say.

As I go in, I hear him call to the cabin boy last of all. “Dinner, John.”

Charon presides over our meal, and when we are done and the table cleared and restored, the steward calls the harpooneers. Once again, order is upended. I am with the captain at his maps when I hear the steward announce the meal to Ligeia, and she to her second. The whole ship feels at ease but me, and I realize this is my first meal since Sirene but not theirs. While I mended from the horror of my vision, work continued on as usual aboard the Shade.

Ligeia and I have not spoken since the ship’s departure, and I watch her enter; she never once looks at me. A cursory glance would have said one thing, I suppose. Perhaps, a refusal to look at all says another, but unless she speaks or lets loose her thoughts upon the water, I cannot pretend to know; and we do so often pretend. We lay claim to magical thinking and interpret the heart through the logic of the mind, guesswork, and our stirred and misplaced emotions. There exists much more magic in all the world than ever I imagined, but presumption is no potion, at least not one that does anything but poison. I will not cast my presumption upon her; when she speaks, I will know.

The captain draws his finger along the map and marks three coordinates; latitude, longitude, and time. “Today, you will take your first soul. Yours is the only boat we’ll lower; Ligeia will be your harpooneer.”

I am watching when she does not look up.

#

Captain Charon warns no crewman that a drowning lays ahead. In accordance with his secrecy, I keep my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly sway in a strange current for these well-lit waters; and I watch the under-surface for the signs of that troubled ship.

The harpooneers are still tucked away to their meal when I feel again the surging presence of god, but I say nothing; how can I? However long I’ve been to bed, and they tell me it’s been days, the ship has sailed unharassed. My first time back to face the waters, I’m bound to feel the fear of him, and even if he is to come, it may again be for my eyes only.

The captain’s map showed no seething god; only a single soul before his fate. God does not show for one, they say.

I am intent to stand my watch, but what god wills must be, and no resolution can withstand him; in that frightful, vigilant mood, my soul leaves me; though my body still sways as a pendulum will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn. Lifelessly, I swing from the spars, and for every swing I make there is a nod from below from Graveling, the helmsman, watching.

He calls to attention the crew. “The watch is soul-chasing; be wary;” and they peer into the wide trance of the sea.

From alongside the ship, I watch as the captain emerges from his cabin and orders men to secure my body to the mast. They bind me there and whisper thoughts into my unlistening ear. “This is the calling of the watchman, both normal and right; go to where the failing soul calls. There, we must follow.”

Bubbles burst in my soul’s eyes; like vises, my hands grasp the shrouds of the sea; some invisible, gracious agency preserves me; and with a shock of life, I flee in the direction of the current’s calling. And lo! close over our lee, not forty fathoms off, a capsized hull of a frigate rolls. Broken square-rigged masts plummet like darts, and the sails and sailor who escape them twist in the deep like ghosts.

Lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly sprouting an endless arm, god, who was not to come, stretches from darkness to the man; and his arm reaches through him and on beyond the surface of the sea. In that arm, I trace a drowned man’s life.

The sailor’s broad, glossy back glistens in the sun’s dwindling rays. He’s escaped the shore and the cruelties of men and their cotton only to be plucked from the ocean’s fields, and I’m not the man to pluck him; he deserves better than this. Give me the superstition of the crew and let me believe I deliver paradise. Let this be my purpose.

I see all of him and know him as I cannot know myself; as if it were I who died and him watching. It should have been Graveling on watch, not me; should be his eyes which take him in. I am but an intruder here, in places I do not belong.

The water pulls away, and I hit the deck with a crying breath as my boat is lowered; Ligeia waits with my boat’s crew for their headsman, me. I must awaken to my duty.

The frigate looks like a portly burgher bathing on a warm afternoon, and I almost call it a miracle of god that we’re not harvesting all her crew. As if struck by some enchanter’s wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it are given into wakefulness; all but one. More than a score of voices, from all parts of that vessel, simultaneously create a whale-song to guide us to their fallen.

The sudden exclamations of the crew must have warned their god; and ere our boat arrives, majestically turning, he swims away to the leeward, but with such a steady tranquility, and making so few ripples as he swims, I suppose he might not as yet be alarmed. I give orders to withdraw the oars, and no man thinks but in whispers. Do they see him, too?

Seated on the gunwales of the boat, we advance; the current admitting the noiseless sails being set; we glide in chase after the soul, but below, god flits his many arms, and he sinks out of sight like a tower swallowed up.

Ligeia steadies the grip on her harpoon. “Grim death and grinning devils,” her thoughts cry. “Raise the buried dead out of their graves, boys!”

“Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!” the crew in thought reply, raising some old war-whoop to the sea; as every soulman in the strained boat involuntarily bounces forward with the one tremendous leading stroke.

Her harpoon pulled back, Ligeia rises up and lets loose. That same moment something goes hot and hissing along every one of our wrists; a magical current, like holding an enemy’s two-edged sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time striving to wrest it from our clutch. Ligeia snags the soul through his center and reels in her line.

I rise up out of the boat and float through the light to Ligeia and the soul she cradles; the men leave us to this silent moment, while above, the frigate casts its black shape upon the surface. No other soul will fall tonight; no other man will die.

I want to touch the light she holds, golden and pure, but I do not reach; I remember his shell which still sinks away and the life I saw played out on the arm of god. “He was a better man than I.”

“There are none better,” Ligeia says. “There are none worse.”

Yet, I know this cannot be true; we aren’t the same and don’t deserve an equal end.

“It isn’t just,” she says.

“Is there no justice?”

“Is that what you seek?”

“Mercy?” I ask. “Love?”

Then I see her again with that golden soul, and I have my answer, even if I know nothing more of creation or the sea. Near transparent, bluish white, and undulating beneath the waves, she brings love with her to those she claims.

Chapter Fourteen

Ligeia and I meet Captain Charon in his cabin; from his locker in the transom he selects a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts and spreads them on his screwed-down table. He draws a finger across various lines and shadings and at intervals, refers to piles of old log-books beside him, wherein is set down wisdom, both human and Sirene.

“We have time,” he says at last.

Suspended in chains over his head, the heavy pewter lamp rocks with the motion of the ship and throws shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow, till it almost seems that while he himself marked out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil traced lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead.

“Lines of fate are converging, and when they do, we’ll need to be ready; me, for my journey,” he looks at me, “and you for your command.”

“So soon?” I ask and cannot help but glance beside me to Ligeia. Since our return from the hunt, she has once again refused to ever even look my way, and now her gaze remains fixed on some uncertain middle distance, entirely separate from me. I resign myself to her distaste and return my attention to the captain.

“I cannot command when the sun runs widdershins,” he says. “We might hope to ride the beast, but never will it be domesticated.”

His maps threads a maze of currents and lines both physical and metaphysical, pertaining to powers I do not yet understand; I try to trace his logic there but cannot find it.

“But time enough remains,” he says. “We’ll make first for the banks of paradise and unload the captured soul.”

Not fully acquainted with the ways of newly departed souls, it seems to me a strange task to usher the dead to their fated destination. Are they not meant to arrive there already? Then I think of the systems of the sea, and the fish that move in great schools according to the sun’s warmth upon the waters and the blooming and dying of their food; and they by their travels bring the tuna and seals which in turn attract fearful shivers of sharks. Fate acts indirectly to draw the shark along the African coast, and fate, indirectly, acts through us to bring souls to their rest.

Still, there remains the entanglement of our purpose and the crew's superstition. These are not the islands of Elysium to which we sail, but a Hades like any other, like the one outside Sirene.

As Ligeia and I leave the cabin, she grabs my hand and holds me there, just outside the door. “I have a favor to ask; perhaps it’s beyond anything reasonable for one acquaintance to ask another, but this time and place might be the only chance, now that my Billy is gone.”

Billy was the name of the last first mate, he who had been her lover.

I am surprised she’s chosen to approach me, considering how well she’s communicated her dislike. Even now she looks past me, as if I do not exist. Still, I say simply, “Tell me.”

“My eyes are useless out of water,” she says. “It is no matter in the bubble of this ship as I can trace surfaces using sounds beyond your hearing, but when we reach the Atoll of Paradise, I want more, to see the shores above water through your eyes; in return, you’ll see submerged spaces through mine.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My people have the capacity for a mental link normally reserved for lovers,” she says. “I had this link with my Billy, and while at the Atoll, I hope you’ll form this link with me. The immensity of the favor is in its intimacy; secrets are impossible, as you and I become one mind. I will know all of you, and you will know all of me.”

In truth, I’m staggered by the implications, but I put off addressing them by saying instead, “I didn’t know. I thought, perhaps, you couldn’t stand the sight of me.”

“If we link,” she says, “you’ll see I have no animosity toward you, only the same curiosity as you have for all the sea. We are unknowns to one another, Eleazar, and that ignorance can never be regained; all mysteries will be replaced by knowledge, save to that degree we are mysteries to ourselves.”

There are times when I wonder if this whole universe is a vast practical joke, though its wit I can but dimly discern. I face nothing worth disputing and bolt down all events, all creeds, beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to me only sly, good-natured hits, jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen joker. An odd wayward mood is coming over me, and it comes in the very midst of my earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed a thing most momentous, is now a part of the joke.

Ligeia has not ignored me as I thought and asks to bind our consciousnesses the way their lovers do, that she might see the surface through my eyes. I am almost willing, almost most willing, except for this one thing; she will know the secret part of me where I pretend I’m not enamored with her and enraptured by her beauty. Shame kindles me, and I burn.

“Ligeia,” says I, “does this sort of thing often happen?”

Without much emotion, she gives me to understand that such things do not.

“Mr. Graveling,” says I, turning to the helm where he stands buttoned up in his oil-jacket, calmly smoking his pipe; “Mr. Graveling, I think I have heard you say that of all harpooneers who have ever been, our chief harpooneer is by far the most highly regarded.”

“Certain. I’ve heard tale that her harpoon reclaimed two dozen souls off a sinking ship in a gale off Cape Horn, mid-sink mind you, while it still plummeted at speed and before it hit hard bottom.”

“Mr. John,” says I, turning to the gray bearded cabin boy; “you are experienced in these things, and I’m not. Will you tell me whether the Atoll of Paradise is wondrous at all in its appearance?”

“Can’t you ask me something harder?” says John. “I should like to know a boat’s crew who’s ever seen its equal.”

“Here then, from two impartial witnesses, I have a deliberate statement on the matter,” I say to Ligeia. “Considering, therefore, that harpooneer and atoll are both without their equal, you may make of my consciousness your bivouack; whatever may be there to be beheld, we shall behold it, together, and whatever embarrassments that may be pried open as a consequence, I expect your discretion will be as keen as your aim.”

I withdraw abruptly, before she can answer, and find myself a space below the cabin where I take a moment’s measure of privacy, perhaps my last. It reminds me of my last working voyage, and the ship’s captain whose rejection was meant to be my murder, of that intent I have no question. Before that winter, before his rage turned against me fully, before I had nothing to my name, I was in the habit of tinkering with my last will and testament. It was the fourth time in my nautical life that I’d done the same thing, and at the time I thought I still possessed something worth bestowing. A friend acted as my witness, and after the ceremony was concluded, I felt a stone was rolled away from my heart.

In the end, I had nothing to lose but my life, and somehow I’ve kept that. All the days I now live are as good as the days of Lazarus after his resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so many years, months, or weeks as the case might be. I survived myself; my death and burial are locked up in my chest. I look round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a family vault. With all that I have gained, I can risk my dignity.

I rise to my feet, turn my face to the deck, and unconsciously roll up the sleeves of my frock; here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and discomfort; let the devil fetch the hindmost.

Chapter Fifteen

We breach the surface and are swept by dismasting blasts as direful as any that ever lashed salted wave. These waters know what shipwrecks are and have drowned full many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Ligeia asks, but I tell her there’s nothing yet to see. Mr. Graveling assures us there are hours left to sail; one cannot approach Paradise from below.

South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a vessel looms ahead, its craft bleached like the skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, the spectral hull is traced with long channels of reddened rust, like the bleeding of a whale. All her spars and her rigging are like the thick branches of trees furred over with frost; all her sails torn and flailing. No man stands at look-out.

The captain made no announcement of drowned souls, but I feel the truth lodged in my throat, as sure as if I died mid swallow. She’s a ghost ship.

I hurry to the cabin and throw the door open without knocking; the captain stands at his table, expecting me.

“You’ve seen the Starling,” he says. “You’ll see her again before this is over.”

“They’re dead, and we weren’t there.”

“We weren’t,” he says, “but we will be.”

Under orders, I return to the deck and command the men to make all sail, and the Starling trails off behind us. As we leave the blistering winds to the south and the time between us and our destination dwindles, I know I can no longer put off the fulfillment of my oath.

Ligeia takes me into her embrace and pulls me into her so that my flesh passes through hers, an anchor plunging into the sea. Her form fits over mine like a transparent jacket, and the sensation of our minds joining is the flash of a thousand insights, all at once: the white beast I witnessed is not god but a physical manifestation of fate, a shadow of the divine for certain, closer to the godhead than the angels, and how often has man mistakenly fallen to worship plaintively at their feet?

I know these things without being told: Mr. Graveling is not as accepting of my arrival as I’m wont to assume; I am not in love, only enamored with the mysteries Ligeia represents; and she is here aboard the Shade because her people suspect the captain’s plan. If he cannot be dissuaded, she must protect the integrity of time and fate, whatever the means and whatever the cost.

I would wrestle with these new understandings but the world beyond the Shade presents itself as new in form and concept. We remain one, bodily, Ligia and me, as the ship passes archipelagos of romantic isles which for leagues and leagues sporadically flank the seas with ancient and unentered forests, where gaunt pines stand like serried lines of Gothic kings.

Ligeia in her infancy was laid down on the sandy bottom to nurse at her maternal sea; but without her lover–or now, without me–never has she witnessed any such as this except as through the ocean’s thick blue veil. As the Shade’s prow points to the island haven, her mind shudders through mine; she wonders what humanity went out death-harvesting with all those weapons that drifted down to Sirene to hang collected from a tavern ceiling.

Far down the afternoon; floating in the lovely sunset sea, sweet and plaintive prayers curl up in a rosy air, as if the deep green convent valleys of the Manilla isles wantonly turned sailor and went to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns. The prayers are neither whale-song nor human, and I alone among the human crew can hear them; and I alone perceive their meaning; for this is not a voice upon the air but Ligeia’s within my soul, welling up in a tongue I’ve never heard but know as well as my own. She is singing to sleep the sun with the rapture of first sighting.

The sun draws in its cloak and calls up the moon upon the eastern horizon, and that silver light sets upon a low white atoll, like a diamond collar clasped upon that bold green sea.

John sings out from the main-mast: paradise! Paradise ho!

We retrieve the soul from where the captain stashed it in his locker in the transom among his maps, a foolish, ghastly notion; and it could not house more than five, even with the maps removed; I’ve yet to be told where we house large collections. Apparently, Ligeia doesn’t know, either. Her regular ship has brilliant cisterns along the hull and from them souls tumble out into their dark, dense home.

I hold the soul to my bosom as I held him at his capture—as Ligeia held him—and flesh-to-soul I assure him that all is well. I feel his peace; not a logical peace but beyond understanding. It’s instinctual, founded on his trust in me like a newborn’s trust in his mother. His trust in Ligeia, that is, his soul to her flesh. Without her this communication would be broken, and I’ve never heard that the Shade speaks to the souls she takes. They are left unaware until voyage’s end: blind; deaf; unknowing.

Over and over, I am called to question the purpose for which I came; and in this anguish, Ligeia offers no comfort. She has no answers beyond the suspicion that our ways have always been barbaric. Any hope will not be found here but outside, in whatever secrets lie within the atoll.

Still cradling the soul like an abused and rescued child, I turn to face Captain Charon, and my face conceals nothing. The Sireners have their way of linking soul to soul; humanity has its eyes.

“Within the white sands’ rim, you’ll find his resting place,” the captain says. “I apologize for his keeping thus far, but I’ve collected necessities below that cannot yet be disturbed. He knows no different, but even if he did, in a moment’s time it would be all forgotten. The glory of his arrival is at hand. Now beware your face before the crew and assuage your doubts, for to them you wear the heavy Iron Crown of Lombardy, forged from the nail that crucified their Savior. As He delivered them, so you deliver this one into Paradise. He is your thief upon the tree, and to him you can now proclaim, ‘Behold, today!’ Salvation, ho.”

His lip twitches a moment’s grin, and he herds me to the door and to the deck where the crew, true to his word, stand gathered, waiting. He is behind me (the two of me) as I step out into the moonlit night, the golden booty in my arms. The crew roars with victory and delight.

This is their purpose and the reason for their being.

“A speech is in order,” says Mr. Graveling, and the others lift their voices in accord.

This moment offers us no escape, and so together Ligeia and I address the crew. “Our duty here is in service of fate, and so it is true for me, that my one cogged circle fits into various wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, the arms of fate are like so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before us; and we are their match. In the lighting of fate, the match is used up, and we have been so heavily used. The days of our burning cannot continue forever.”

The men stir uneasily, and I feel Charon’s heavy presence looming behind me.

“We stand at fate’s altar,” I continue, “and now prophesy that I will remember my rememberer. I say to you all, be the prophet and your own word’s fulfillment. Speak and see it done. Let paradise open and take him in.”

They cheer while yet perplexed, and I do not blame them. What madness has our combined minds produced? I will remember my rememberer? They seem words without meaning, and yet they have the taste of prophecy on them; Ligeia would know.

—Thaddeus Thomas

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